We travel for what feels like hours or a day. I’m not sure. They’ve locked me up in a crate like a dog. I want to cry, but Dad always said not to show them tears. He said that’s when they know they’ve got you. I’m scared I’ll piss my pants again. Then my tears won’t matter as much. One of them already made a point about how gross I smell. I push my shoulders back. Dad said always meet your death like a man. Men don’t pee their pants. But then again, I’m not a man. I’m a scared boy.
Harsh, blaring sunlight stings my eyes as I try to focus on the face above me. It’s not the hollow-eyed man. This is someone new. His face is pudgier, and a cigar burns in his large hand. He has a smile on his face, and it’s not a scary one. He looks kind, but that’s probably a mirage because he’s connected to the two who just murdered my parents. And murderers aren’t good people.
“You hungry?”
He has a thick Russian accent like my dad. That’s stupidly comforting to me. Familiar. I don’t respond, but my stomach growls, betraying me.
He reaches his hand out to me. “Come on, then.”
I take it, but I don’t want to. It’s a reflex because I’m frightened of what will happen if I don’t.
‘What’s your name?” he asks kindly.
“Mikhail Smirnov.”
I gaze around the room. A kitchen—if you can call it that. The space is larger than our two-bedroom apartment in Chicago. The floors look like glass, beige with flecks of black and white in them. They’re kind of cool looking. I’ve only ever seen floors like this in movies. Rich people have floors like this.
“My name is Sergei.” He leads me to a black island in the middle of the room and gestures for me to take a seat. Once I’m seated, he sits directly across from me. “You like burgers, Mikhail?”
I nod. My throat is so dry I’m not sure I can say anymore.
“How rude of me,” Sergei says, pushing a glass of water toward me. “Mikhail, would you like to live here? It’s a big house, and I have two little boys. Maxim and Alexie. One’s your age and another a few years younger.”
Live here? What the heck is this guy thinking? He’s just killed my parents and now wants me to live with him? Is he a pedophile? Nothing about this is normal. Then again, having your parents brutally murdered in your apartment isn’t normal either.
“Why did you kill my parents?”
He picks up his glass, half the size of mine, and swirls the liquid. “I killed your mother.”
“I saw the bodies. Both my mother and father were lying dead on the ground.”
“Once again, I didn’t kill your parents. I only killed your mother.”
“Why?”
“Because she took something that belongs to me. The only way to get it back was to get rid of her.”
“What did she take?”
“You.”
ChapterOne
Mikhail
The Hunt Club—a large house in the Forest Glen neighborhood in Chicago—makes the depraved fantasies of the rich a reality.
Unlike other sex clubs, it only caters to one kink. Primal. And this isn’t the primal people read in romance novels where the girl frolics in the forest until the man catches her and then makes passionate love to her. Kinky, but in a sweet, safe way that’s palatable to the masses.
This place feeds monsters and encourages debauchery. It’s where animals come to stalk their prey and rip them apart limb by limb until they satiate the monster within.
They nestled the house in the middle of lush forests and ten acres of land. Some rich Chicago financier owns the place, Loren Miller. I did a background check on him. Grandfather was close with Al Capone. Family has old money, but it’s tainted with controversy, and his brother is serving a sentence in upstate New York for killing his wife, which he adamantly denies. But even with all the controversy surrounding them, you wouldn’t know it as you gaze upon the who’s who of Chicago’s upper crust. The Miller money and affluence have protected them well, at least on a superficial level.
I scan the large living room, the ostentatious chandeliers dangling from cream vaulted ceilings, void spaces with off-white leather furniture strategically placed in dark corners, and the crisp white rugs adorning the gold-fleck-covered marble floors.
The hard liquor coats my throat as I drown my vodka on the rocks, slamming the glass on the bar. Yes, the house has a legit bar in the middle of it. An oddity in most houses, it’s more fitting for a dance club in Soho.
“This won’t cut it,” I declare.